Obama prepares to spin loss as victory

Barack Obama could have had a worse Pennsylvania primary. DNA tests could have revealed Tony Rezko to be his father. David Axelrod could have absconded with $40 million from his campaign treasury. He could have bowled a 36.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, on the other hand, could hardly have dreamed of a finer time to tout her Scranton roots in one of her several home states. The seven-week gap between primary contests began with video of Obama’s former pastor shrieking that “America’s chickens have come home to roost” and ended with Obama explaining his way out of what sounded like an insult to the gun-owning, God-fearing Democrats of central and western Pennsylvania during a debate that amounted to a 3-on-1 grilling.

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But instead of deteriorating into a snoozer of a Clinton blowout, polls that had her up an average of 16 percentage points in mid-March now show her up an average of just 6 points. And both camps — including a visibly energized Obama campaign in recent days — are now preparing to spin Tuesday’s results as a victory.

“I’m not predicting a win. I’m predicting it’s going to be close and that we are going to do a lot better than people expect,” Obama told the Pittsburgh radio station KDKA Tuesday.

An Obama aide said that even if Clinton wins by 15 or 20 percentage points, she can’t change the race’s underlying dynamic.

Clinton’s campaign has another view: that a win is a win.

“I object to the notion that we need to achieve a certain standard of victory other than victory,” said Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson.

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“Sen. Obama has outspent us 3-to-1 in Pennsylvania,” he said in an earlier interview. “If he can’t win a big swing state with that advantage, just what will it take?”

The competing arguments previewed the spin the public will begin to hear Tuesday night. If past primaries offer any prediction, a Clinton win will offer her new momentum, money and hope — for a few days.

An Obama upset — as his popular victory in Texas or Ohio would have been — will likely end her campaign, as she herself acknowledged Saturday in York, Pa.

“I have to win,” Clinton said.

After her victories in Ohio and Texas — in which she led in most polls — Clinton enjoyed a few days of momentum, until the reality gradually reasserted itself that she trails narrowly, but significantly, among the delegates who will decide the contest.

The Clinton campaign’s goal Wednesday, if she wins, will be to argue that Pennsylvania is different. Clinton bases her arguments against Obama on the premise that he’s a weak general election candidate whose flaws, finally revealed, will cut the legs out from his campaign.